SIRTI eyes wet-lab facility at Riverpoint

The Spokane Intercollegiate Research and Technology Institute has applied for a $3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration to build a 35,000-square-foot wet-lab facility at the southwest portion of the Riverpoint Higher Education Park.

By Megan Cooley Spokane Journal of Business

SIRTI has told the federal agency that a private investor or investors here are willing to match the grant funds, says Lloyd Kirry, an economic development representative with the EDA’s regional office in Seattle. The proposed project’s $6 million price tag would cover the purchase of the land, construction of the proposed building, and the cost of its equipment, he says.

The project is in the proposal stage, but if the grant is approved, ground could be broken as early as May or June, Kirry says.

Patrick Tam, SIRTI’s executive director, confirms there are “plans afoot to do something like that,” but declines to elaborate or name the investor or investors expected to pay for half the project.

A separate source says the $3 million contribution could be in the form of a land donation.

Securing the grant isn’t a sure thing. The EDA typically has three or four times as many proposals as it can afford to fund, and this year, the agency’s funds for construction grants have been cut by 25 percent, Kirry says.

The average overall amount the EDA grants Washington state projects is about $5 million a year, he says. In dollar amount, SIRTI’s request for $3 million is in the middle range of proposals before the agency now, Kirry says.

“I think the nature of the project is consistent with the EDA’s orientation,” he says. “The big problem is the availability of funds.”

The grant request says the proposed building would include 12,000 square feet of wet-lab space and 8,000 square feet of space that could be converted into wet labs in the future, Kirry says.

The remainder of the building would be comprised of common areas, a video-conference room, and other meeting rooms, he says.

Wet-lab space, usually defined as having sinks, a deionized water supply, ventilation hoods, and other specialized components, is used by biomedical and biotechnology businesses for product research and development.

Building wet labs costs $200 to $300 per square foot, so it’s sometimes difficult for young companies to afford to build their own.

Demand for wet-lab space in Spokane is said to be high. Last July, all of SIRTI’s wet-lab space was occupied, and wet-lab space in Washington State University’s recently constructed Health Sciences Building, at the Riverpoint Higher Education Park, is reserved for academic use.

SIRTI had said then that it hoped to double its 2,000 square feet of wet-lab space in the near future.

http://www.spokanejournal.com/spokane_id=article&sub=1532